Thaurinn Needleback
::"I wonder if I... knew that." Though skilled with words and all manner of performance arts, Thaurinn Needleback is at odds with herself due to her failing memory and less than stellar impulse control. Because of her poor memory, Thaurinn regularly consults various notes she keeps on her person to remember things she may have forgotten. She is flirtatious, humorous, and rarely means harm beyond admittedly petty grudge matches. However, she is particularly sensitive to the Kyrolid ligvoel and darkrunner conflict despite being of neither race and also not being from Kyrol at all, and she refuses to accept any sort of joke that makes light of the tension there. Background Thaurinn and her twin sister Buminni were born and raised on the island nation of Drupkkyn. Her family left for Streeg when Thaurinn and Buminni were around ten years old to be closer to their various military contacts and family members. While Buminni had aspirations of following in their parents' footsteps and someday becoming a pilot in the Alamo Empire's army, Thaurinn was unconvinced that a powerful army or military force could bring peace to the galaxy. She preferred diplomatic means and also connecting with people through entertainment and the arts -- after all, people who laughed and smiled together would not turn against one another. To this end, Thaurinn dilligently studied and saved up her money, eventually being accepted into the University of Tronstdom at the age of sixteen and necessitating her to move to Wargäreim. As most of her schooling expenses were paid by military stipends from her family, Thaurinn's opinion of the Alamo Empire mellowed somewhat while in school. The ideals of the Empire were noble, certainly, and she didn't find any fault with people who were willing to fight to defend those ideals. However, force could not solve all conflicts, and she was resolute in her goal to leave school as soon as she could and become the changes she wished to see. While studying international affairs, she maintained her rigorous practice in various performance arts, sure of the arts' ability to bring people together in ways that mere diplomacy and negotiation could not. After three years in Tronstdom, she applied for a doctorate program with the University of Edlarkken and was accepted. Her mentor throughout her schooling was the aging professor Rorogn Meltrelt, who despite being human hailed from Kyrol. From Dr. Meltrelt, Thaurinn became keenly aware of the situation in Kyrol where the nation was torn apart by racial strife. Under Dr. Meltrelt's study, Thaurinn became determined to eventually go to Kyrol and help mend the wounds on the populace there. After all, as a member of neither race involved in the blood feud, Thaurinn would be able to serve as a mediator. And if even Kyrol could be changed, then surely that spoke well of the future of the galaxy at large. If the Kyrolid people with generations of hatred and war could eventually lay down their weapons, then perhaps even the Alamo Empire and the Veriol Alliance could do the same, and people like her family would never have to serve in the military again. To get out of school faster, Thaurinn worked year-round, rarely taking vacations and communicating with her family mostly through letters. Her sister Buminni became a recognized fighter pilot in the Alamo Empire during this time. On a rare visit, Buminni gave Thaurinn a pilot hat -- a teasing reference to Thaurinn's mistaken impression that Buminni had, all this time, been training to pilot planes, not spaceships. However, Buminni had one for herself as well, and the two laughed about once again "matching," even though they were on wildly different career paths. After graduating with her doctorate at age twenty-four, Thaurinn secured a job with an independent Kylian rights organization and moved to Kyrol to begin studying the local customs of the land and learning what she could of the people. After half a year, she began her work as a negotiator between the darkrunners and ligvoels. Initially, they had few positive results -- but there was a turning point after Thaurinn saw several darkrunner and ligvoel children playing a ball game in the streets late in the evening. They seemed oblivious to how, according to their culture, they were at war, and they were laughing together as though there was no race war at all. Reminded of how she had believed laughter and happiness could unite people, Thaurinn requested permission from her superiors to gather together local artists of all kinds for an arts show. With nothing left to lose, they agreed, and the resulting show did more in uniting the local darkrunners and ligvoels than any negotiations had. There was still tension, but each side had been able to recognize the merits of the art from the other. Continuing these methods, Thaurinn eventually started to see change in some of the Kyrolid populace that they worked alongside. As time went on, she found herself performing more in the various art shows they organized than actually negotiating peace talks. Thaurinn's work eventually took her to Greneeksry, where she found herself in the middle of an attack coordinated by both ligvoels and darkrunners. Determined to eliminate the "outsider" influence on Greneeksry, the two sides had indeed united as Thaurinn had known them to be able to -- to get rid of Thaurinn and her colleagues. While none of them were killed thanks to the timely intervention of several defectors from the attacking groups and locals who wanted peace, Thaurinn was badly injured after trying and failing to talk down their assailants. She slipped in and out of consciousness for several weeks, and she remained at a hospital in Karikaros for the better part of a year. In this timeframe, it was soon discovered that her brain had been badly injured in the attack. She struggled to remember anything after the accident unless she wrote it down or rehearsed the memory repeatedly, and even that wasn't certain -- significant events following the injury were likely to come and go as they pleased in her memory. Her impulse control was also significantly hampered, prone to more reckless, spur-of-the-moment decisions, and she often failed to notice even regular details entirely, never mind potentially dangerous ones. Unable to return to her job and disillusioned with how she felt like a different person entirely in many ways, Thaurinn moved to performance arts exclusively. She mostly stayed within the realm of improvised acting or shows, as her failing memory meant she could not remember lines or stage directions easily. While she had enough money to get by due to the nature of her injury and how she had been injured in the line of duty, Thaurinn struggled to find purpose in mere arts. When she had been performing in Kyrol, it had been with a purpose beyond just seeking a paycheck. Longing for that sort of purpose again, Thaurinn took to traveling in search of something new to fill the void in her life. Category:Characters Category:Ealdremen Player Characters Category:Daydreams of Arplakoon